As the world's population increases, so too does the amount of energy being consumed. Unfortunately, this increased energy consumption has several undesirable consequences. One such consequence involves the introduction of pathogens and pollutants into the atmosphere from the burning of traditional fuel sources, such as coal, oil and natural gas. These pathogens and pollutants have a deleterious effect on both people and the environment. For example, the burning of fossil fuels generates greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, which build up in the upper portion of the atmosphere. When sunlight is incident on the earth, these gases allow the sunlight to enter the atmosphere freely. The sunlight strikes the earths' surface where some of it is reflected back towards space as infrared radiation (i.e. heat). This infrared radiation is then trapped within the atmosphere by the greenhouse gases that have built up in the atmosphere causing an increase in global temperatures.
Another such consequence involves the cost of the fuel being used to generate the increased amount of energy. As mentioned hereinabove, fossil fuels are used to generate the energy required by the majority of the world's population and include oil, natural and coal. However, because fossil fuels are a non-renewable energy resource having finite global reserves, the cost of locating and extracting these fuels increase as these reserves are depleted. These costs are then passed onto the consumer. Additionally, methods for extracting these fuels not only create undesirable ecological consequences, but in some cases they are dangerous. One way to address these issues is to develop products that use less energy, but that achieve the same result. Unfortunately, while advances have been made in this area, they have not been sufficient enough to accomplish the needed reduction in the demand for increased energy. Another way to address these consequences is to take advantage of other naturally occurring and non-toxic sources of energy, such as wind power, solar power and water power.
One such attempt at addressing these issues includes the use of solar collectors to harness and convert the energy of sunlight into electrical energy. And although several devices that employ solar cells (collectors) have been develop for application to surfaces that are exposed to sunlight (such as rooftop solar cells), these devices are not easy to use and require the use of drilling a large number of holes through the surface to connect to a power handler device. This is undesirable due to the large number of connection points and thus, wires resulting in a large number of possible failure points.